The United Democratic Party (UDP) scored zero wins in the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) election, the results of which were announced today, because its candidates only had a superficial grassroots presence, party MDC Paul Lyngdoh said today.
“Our candidates were mobilized at a very superficial level owing to a lack of party workers at the grassroots level and, organisationally, we are still very weak in Garo Hills,” Lyngdoh, an MDC in the Khasi Hills district council (KHADC) told Highland Post.
Another factor is that the glory days of the party in the western districts are long gone. The UDP used to have senior party leaders from Garo Hills whose influence was strong with the electorate back in the 1980s and 1990s. All of the big name figures who campaigned for the party this time, including Speaker of the Assembly Metbah Lyngdoh and Home Minister Lahkmen Rymbui, were drawn from Khasi-Jaiñtia Hills.
On the bright side, the UDP, Lyngdoh said, can take heart that its candidates were able to make some impact, with several managing to get enough votes to hold on to their deposit.
“This shows that the UDP in Garo Hills is still growing, at a slow pace, and we hope to improve,” he said.
He refused to see anything ominous in the results of the GHADC election when it comes to the party’s performance in the Assembly polls scheduled for 2023.
“We saw in the general election in 2018 that there was a non-Congress government formed by the MDA (Meghalaya Democratic Alliance, of which the UDP is a part) but after a year came the MP election and, despite a common candidate by the MDA, the Congress won (the Shillong seat) so we cannot generalize,” he said.
The regional party could not compete with the national parties when it came to financial resources but Lyngdoh said it was too early to tell whether this played a significant part in the party’s failure to win any GHADC seats.
